This is a part of “Protecting The Shield” – a two-year Asbury Park Press investigation that probes gaps in police accountability, which can harm citizens and cost New Jersey taxpayers millions of dollars.Read our investigative series

When departments fail to adequately supervise cops, the public is put at risk.

In one example, a federal judge wrote in 2007 that a jury could find Atlantic City turned a "blind eye" to one officer who she derided as "short-fused" and "volatile." That officer, Andrew Jaques, remained a police officer for 10 more years, leaving in August 2017 on an unspecified medical disability, according to town records.

Jaques, 39, was the subject of at least five internal affairs investigations in an eight-month period in 2001 and 2002, according to federal civil court records. He was fired in 2006, but later reinstated by the Civil Service Commission, records show.

At least one of the internal affairs investigations was handled by his uncle, a sergeant in the department's internal affairs unit, court documents revealed.

Internal affairs complaints accused Jaques of losing his temper in traffic stops and allegedly abusing his girlfriend, bludgeoning a bicyclist and choking a restrained man unconscious in the 2001 and 2002 period.

He also had a pending disciplinary charge for which he received a 30-day "punishment of record" before officially leaving the department. The pending charge was not released by the city. Jaques had been on medical leave since May 2017.

One excessive force lawsuit against Jaques and the Atlantic City Police Department filed in 2016 is pending. The city refused to release the terms of the settlement from a second suit.

In its separation agreement with Jaques, the city said it would give a neutral reference to any future employers about his tenure as a city police officer. He didn't receive payment for any used time, but the city agreed to support his request for a disability pension.

Police accountability in New Jersey starts and often ends with the judgment of police chiefs, who determine if they will pursue allegations of misconduct against an officer. With hundreds of chiefs across the state and little oversight, the quality of that enforcement varies widely, the Asbury Park Press found.

From 2010 through 2016, citizens filed at least 37,456 internal affairs complaints against cops throughout New Jersey.

No one on the outside knows what happened with those complaints. The details of the complaints and any action taken against police officers are secret.

The internal affairs system in New Jersey is so broken that attorney Gregg L. Zeff said he tells clients abused by police not to bother filing a complaint.

Zeff has pursued police and prison abuse and defense cases for 30 years in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but also represented police officers in discrimination claims, whistleblower incidents and employment disputes.

"Internal affairs is very much like a human resources department of a corporation," the Philadelphia-based attorney said. "They're not there to support the employee or the citizen; they're really there to protect the police.

"In taking your statement, they're going to look at you as if ‘why did you deserve to get beaten?'"

Law abiding officers are done a disservice by lacking supervision, according to Samuel DeMaio, who took over as Bloomfield's public safety director in 2014 after conducting an eight-month-long study of the department and its problems.

Two Bloomfield officers went to prison after beating a man during a traffic stop and lying in police reports.

Former Bloomfield police officer Sean Courter.(Photo: File photo)

Orlando Trinidad and Sean Courter had a history of internal affairs complaints regarding alleged assaults and excessive force, DeMaio said. But no one at the department ever reviewed the allegations.

Trinidad and Courter "were done an injustice by this police department," DeMaio said. "There were no systems in place to identify clear signs of the direction that they were heading in."

In one brutal example, Trinidad mocked his department's mechanism for watching cops, a lawsuit claimed. In 2013, after beating and almost ripping the ear off an unarmed man, Rodolfo Crespo, in the department's holding area, Trinidad walked to a nearby surveillance camera, looked up, pointed and said "IA" – the initials for the police department's internal affairs unit, the man claimed in his lawsuit.

The city settled the Crespo suit, who claims he suffered a massive laceration to his right ear, a thoracic spine fracture and multiple head traumas. They agreed to a $363,910 payout. As is standard practice in settlements, no admission of wrongdoing was made by the city.

The Bloomfield Police Department in Essex County knew of at least 37 documented incidents where Trinidad allegedly used force over eight years – beginning when he started with the department in 2006. His use of force incidents made up about 27 percent of the 135 force reports documented by all officers in a 10-year period, one suit claimed.

Lacking standards for psychological testing

Paterson Patrolman Manuel Avila's mental health was in question. He was hospitalized in 2004 after mixing the sleep aid Ambien with wine, an internal affairs captain recalled in court testimony. He was hospitalized again and his gun was taken away in 2005 after his worried brother called police. Responding officers saw Avila go outside in the winter wearing just a t-shirt and sneakers, appearing agitated.

Former Paterson police officer Manuel Avila just before the jury entered the courtroom in June 2010. Avila was found not guilty of sexual assault.(Photo: File photo)

After swallowing many sleeping pills and spending five days in a psych ward in 2007, a psychologist determined Avila shouldn't carry a gun, court testimony showed.

"And he should, therefore, leave the police department," Capt. Troy Oswald said in court, quoting from a letter the doctor wrote.

But Avila was close to his 20th year of service with the department, a milestone that would entitle him to collect 50 percent of his salary in a pension.

"Officer Avila had 19-and-a-half years on the department and what I really wanted to do is let him get to his 20th year," Oswald testified.

The department reached out to the doctor again and got him to approve their plan to have Avila remain on duty – without a gun – booking inmates.

"(The doctor) felt that there was no problem of danger to others as long as he's just moving prisoners and he's not carrying a gun," Oswald testified. The chief made a decision to place him in the cell block watching over prisoners, he said.

About a month after serving on the cell block, Avila was accused of forcing a woman in custody to perform oral sex on him.

Avila was later acquitted of a sexual assault and other charges. But his department spent nine years and at least $1.8 million in taxpayer money in an attempt to fire him. The city ultimately settled by allowing Avila to resign and seek a police pension.

Avila could not be reached for comment.

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Capt. Troy Oswald describes a series of incidents involving Patrolman Manuel Avila during testimony before a trial in which Avila was found not guilty of sexual assault. Paterson spent nine years and $1.8 million trying to get rid of Avila.

The removal was an expensive and damaging debacle that illustrates the troubling intersection of psychology and police behavior. Even when warning flags are raised, police agencies are hamstrung when trying to keep troubled officers away from the public.

While the common perception is that innocent civilians are injured or killed when a cop "snaps," that is seldom the case, peer-reviewed, professional studies show. Violent, even deadly, tendencies build over time and can be fueled by police department politics and domestic disharmony, rather than the stress of policing.

A healthy, well-adjusted officer – even if exposed to an extreme stressor – won't "snap," said Laurence Miller, a Florida-based police and forensic psychologist who's known nationally as an expert in police psychology. There's always a progression of whatever is smoldering beneath the surface – even if it's overlooked.

How supervisors handle officers who misbehave, whether it's major or minor, sends a message to the rest of the officers, Miller said.

No statewide psychological testing standards

There's no law in New Jersey that governs how a psychologist should evaluate an officer or that requires a psychologist have training in police psychology. Standards of conduct vary across the several hundred departments in the state.

"You get into situations where completely untrained, unqualified psychologists are putting their two cents in for purposes of these appeals," police psychologist Matthew Guller said. "I would never do a child custody evaluation or even a business assessment. It's not my specialty. It's like a tax lawyer taking on a divorce."

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Richard Rivera, a former West New York officer, went undercover with the FBI in the mid-1990s to help weed out corruption among the department's cops. Now, after being pushed out of his job, he's an internal affairs expert.
Ryan Ross | Kala Kachmar

Guller is a partner at the Institute for Forensic Psychology based in Oakland, a firm responsible for psychological testing for more than half of the state's police departments.

Although New Jersey doesn't mandate psychological screenings for officers, it's considered a best practice, Guller said. Most police departments in the state do screen new hires or transfers, especially officers who carry weapons.

How flawed department culture builds bad cops

The way a department handles misconduct, enforces its rules and instructs its officers – or doesn't – influences police conduct, according to a 2004 report, "Organizational Culture and Police Misconduct," by University of Virginia School of Law Professor Barbara E. Armacost.

When an incident of police misconduct becomes public, departments tend to distance themselves from the officer by characterizing them as "rogue" instead of looking at the organizational norms and policies that framed the cop's judgment in the first place, Armacost said.

A police officer's stress comes more from the police organization than the job itself, a body of research that began in the early 1990s has consistently shown.

By nature, police officers don't make decisions as individuals. They're embedded in organizations adherent to a chain of command. If an officer is told by a superior to do something he or she thinks is wrong, the officer must decide to defy authority or obey the superior. Both decisions could carry punishment and send a confusing message, according to Armacost.

Favoritism during the disciplinary process – because of friendships, political associations and nepotism – significantly contributes to lower officer performance, according to the study "Organizational Stressors and Police Performance," by Jon M. Shane, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

One of the most effective philosophies for managing police behavior is one that supports its officers, but in return they can't betray the trust, Miller said. Officers can't expect the department to defend misbehavior.

"It's a hard, thin line to walk on," he said.

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James Bayliss, 21 at the time, was beaten by two State Troopers at a traffic stop, despite knowledge that he suffered a brain injury that rendered him unable to clearly and quickly communicate.
Ryan Ross | Kala Kachmar

Scholars say that personality is only one element of what might play into police aggression or misconduct, according to a 1994 National Institute of Justice report, "The Role of Police Psychology in Controlling Excessive Force," which experts say is still relevant today.

"If you start out with a thin-skinned, self-entitled attitude, even the slightest amount of pushback on the part of the citizen may elicit an overreaction," Miller said. "Because that officer by nature takes everything personally, (he or she) has not put on that objectivity and professional detachment."

The report also found that most police psychologists said they were more likely to be involved with counseling and evaluating officers as a response to an excessive force incident rather than training and monitoring behavior for prevention.

Pre-employment psych evaluations will catch most individuals with major personality disorders, like a sociopath, or a person who lacks a conscience, Miller said.

Some may squeak by, but it's more common to see officers who have less severe traits that resemble characteristics of antisocial, narcissistic and paranoid disorders pass the evaluation, he said.

These individuals tend to be a little bit damaged going in, but not necessarily noticeable. Sometimes years on the job can bring those issues to the surface or exacerbate the traits, according to Miller.

Asbury Park Press reporters dug into more than 30,000 public records for two years to produce “Protecting The Shield.” These same journalists report daily as watchdogs in the public interest: examining tax spending, exposing wrongdoing, highlighting advances and often inspiring change that makes New Jersey a better place to live. Follow their work at APP.com and support local journalism today.